TBB: Chapter Five

[caulkhead]

John was kneeling on the floor beside the unconscious blogger, eyes fixed on her face, hands searching gently through her hair. Sherlock's eyes skimmed the room, passing over the patch of blood soaking into the hearthrug, and pausing on the sofa. He swooped, and came up with a mobile phone in his hand.

“Now that's suspicious.”

“What, more suspicious than the unconscious woman with the head injury bleeding on the floor?” John asked, without looking up.

“Hit on the head from behind with the paperweight by your left hand about fifteen minutes ago. Glancing blow. Unpremeditated crime of impulse. Anybody might have done that. I've been tempted to do it myself. What?”

"Not good, really," John said.

“No, the key thing is that this is a heavy-duty government issue phone. Tim's. If he'd been kidnapped, he'd have taken it if he could. Tucked into the cushions, so it couldn't have been lost in a struggle. Hidden, as best he could at short notice. Why?”

Sherlock was pacing up and down the room now, steepled fingers pressed to his lips. Abruptly, he swung round and stared at John.

“How did you know where to go for the pharmacy? I didn't see you use your phone.”

“Tim told me. Why? Does a knowledge of Manchester pharmacies make a man inherently suspect in your book?”

“Said he'd never been to Manchester before. He was lying. Stupid. Stupid . Why didn't I notice?”

“Why should you? He was lying from the moment he got through the door. So was I, come to that. So were you.”

“Different sort of lie. That one was unnecessary. So why do it? Why does it matter?”

On the floor, the blogger moaned. John turned back to her, voice pitched low and reassuring.

“Shhh. Don't try to move. You've had a nasty crack on the head. I think you'll be fine, but we've called an ambulance just in case. There's a couple of things I'd like to check, though, just to make sure you're alright. Can you see me quite clearly?”

Her gaze drifted away from John and focussed muzzily on the tall figure in the corner. She looked back at John again. “Sherringford? Wha'?”

Sherlock flung himself dramatically on his knees at her side and took her hand in both of his.

“John called me when he found you. He thought you might want someone else here while we wait for the ambulance. Can you tell me what happened?”

She sighed and closed her eyes. John leaned forward sharply, reaching for the pulse at her neck. Then her eyes fluttered open again. “Tim. 'S Tim alrigh'?”

Their eyes met over her head.

......

“Unavailable. How the fuck can Mycroft be unavailable? I've spent my entire life being infuriated by his ubiquity. How can he have gone to ground now, when he might actually be some use?”

“Balmoral. Sorting out placement for the royal wedding. Not to be disturbed under any circumstances. So they tell me.”

“Please tell me this is your peculiar idea of a joke.”

“Not at all. I got through to Anthea. She was quite insistent. It was all I could do to persuade her to divert Tim's helicopter to get the casualty out of here to somewhere she can be properly scanned and monitored.”

Sherlock glanced through to the living room, at the too-still figure on the sofa, and pulled the kitchen door shut.

“So we have a civil servant gone rogue, a bunch of goons carrying out burglaries on behalf of an unknown principal, a missing USB stick that could put the country at war, and Mycroft is worrying about confetti? His sense of priorities always did range towards the rococo.”

"So, in your brother's absence, where do you suggest we start?"

“Well, you could start by looking for 'Drop Dead Gorgeous Professor of Labour Movement Infiltration,” suggested Toby, loping elegantly through the open window. “That young man who snaffled all the roast beef was quite vehement about it. Oh, and you might want to check his phone for the last text he received.”

Outside, the clatter of helicopter blades approached.


......

For about three hundred yards John wondered if Sherlock intended to run all the way from Didsbury to Salford. What was it, five miles? They'd done more in their time. Though not, for choice, after a lavish dinner party and an impromptu cranial examination.

Unexpectedly, Sherlock turned without slowing down, the impetus of his spin sending him leaping into the air. He slammed out his hand. A black cab ghosted past them and drew to a halt a few yards ahead. The yellow "For Hire" sign winked out as Sherlock wrenched the door open.

"That's a real superpower, you know," John said, as they flopped into the back seat.

"Engine noise unmistakable. This time of night, heading into town, most likely to be empty." Sherlock leaned forward. "Salford Crescent, opposite the University, thanks" and then slid the little glass partition shut, cutting their conversation off from the driver.

"I liked him," John said abruptly. Sherlock twisted his head sideways, regarding him steadily, without speaking.

"I did like him. What could have made him do it?"

Sherlock leaned forward, his fingers steepled against the bridge of his nose.

"Bribery, blackmail, coercion? Not the first; he's neither short-sighted nor greedy. He's got a first in PPE and yet doesn't seem even to have flirted with the idea of going into the City. Blackmail? What secrets would he have? Nothing revealed on vetting, either when he entered the Civil Service or on his most recent promotion. So it would have to have been either something Mycroft's people missed – possible, but unlikely – or something that happened very recently. What sort of blackmailable indiscretion can a cautious, ambitious young man commit these days, anyway? Especially with my brother's watchful eye on him."

He gave a brief, thoughtful "huff" of breath.

"Coercion. Much more interesting possibility. Pressure exerted on Tim by threats to someone close to him. First question; is there anyone for whom he would risk his career? Not a girl-friend, not given the insights into his seduction technique he decided to share over coffee."

"You mean, 'I always make a point of sending a copy of Polo and half a kilo of Charbonnel & Walker champagne truffles round to any girl I know who's going through a breakup'? He didn't say it was a seduction technique."

"Nevertheless. Of those within earshot, two women, three men and one cat knew exactly where he was coming from. If he isn't interested in the rebound shag, at least he knows that during some part of the time the woman concerned will inevitably spend whimpering to her closest female friends about how badly she's been treated, the mention of Tim's understanding and sensitivity is bound to come up. Safe assumption; his sex life comprises a series of uncomplicated, undemanding, mutually enjoyable, non-exclusive, relatively casual liaisons."

"Lucky sod," John muttered.

"So; if he's reacting to coercion it's being exercised against a relative. Younger than him. Almost certainly female. He's got a surprisingly protective streak towards women."

"Protective? She was out for ten minutes after we got back. God knows how long it was since he slugged her. That was a hard blow, Sherlock. She could have died."

"Indeed, if the first person to find her hadn't been likely to be an Army doctor, if she hadn't been carefully left in the recovery position, if there hadn't been a readily available helicopter able to be pressed into service as an air ambulance her chances really wouldn't have looked good. Suppose, for example, he'd hit her in the burgled flat. His chances of getting away with it would have been massively increased, but her survival odds would have been greatly reduced. Tell me, John; how many cold-blooded killers calculate like that? Even from your limited experience, surely the incongruities must be screaming to high heaven."

"Nevertheless, he did hit her."

"Immediately after receiving a text, according to Toby. A text which is conspicuously not visible on the Government issue mobile phone of which he was so keen to divest himself."

Sherlock pulled the phone from his coat pocket, and turned it over and over in his hand.

"Might have deleted it."

"Unlikely. Deleting it from the phone wouldn't delete it from the logs, and he knows it. Also, while you were helping the helicopter crew, I tried a little experiment. Texted it myself."

"You didn't, by any chance, deploy the words, MYCROFT IF YOU'RE MONITORING THIS GET OFF YOUR FAT ARSE AND MAKE YOURSELF USEFUL , did you?" John enquired.

"Irrelevant. The point is that Toby – whose hearing is exceptionally sensitive –"

"Can tell when a fridge door is opened from three flights up," John agreed.

"Toby was clear that the sound he heard when Tim received his text differed considerably in pitch to the one made by his official phone. Therefore Tim was deliberately carrying two phones this evening, one of them probably a pay-as-you go model purchased in cash."

"Oh, shit. Premeditation."

"Quite so. And, of course, the very fact of Tim's having acquired a second, private phone will have sent up the reddest of flags when it came to Mycroft's attention."

John didn't bother querying Sherlock's use of the term "when."

"So your brother suspected something? And set us up?"

"Yes to the first. As to the second - everything my brother does, when it involves me in any respect whatsoever, is calculated to send a message. And at the moment he's conspicuously doing nothing. So what message is that intended to send?"

He slumped against the cab window, staring out through the cab window into the neon blaze of Rusholme, through which they were passing.

"Give me his phone," John said. "I've had an idea. Something he said before dinner when I was apologising for my sister having bitten him. I want to have a look at his address book and his recent phone calls."

......

John had been in some odd places before, but standing on Sherlock's shoulders attempting to reach the bottom ladder of an iron fire escape in the early hours of a wet Salford morning was decidedly one of the odder ones. He wondered briefly if the whole thing was an exceptionally vivid dream – the lobsters' revenge, perhaps? But then the bottom ladder came down in a rush, and the pain of his skinned knuckles as he attempted to stop it clanging on the brickwork was all too real.

“I still don't see why we couldn't have gone in on the ground floor like Tim did,” he grumbled, once both of them were through the window Sherlock had forced at the top.

“Broken glass everywhere. He's only got to the next room – he'd have heard you coming over it. Anyway, I went back to my flat before I arrived at that dinner party of yours and looked up the catalogue and the floor plan. And if I'm right – and I am – that USB stick should be just about... here.”

Sherlock gave a quick breath of satisfaction as his fingers closed over the small, hard shape tucked into the back of the shelf. But his face, when he looked up, was still wearing the scowl of intense concentration that John privately considered Sherlock's 'thinking' face. It was, on the whole, infinitely less worrying than his 'bored' face, but there was still something deeply unsettling about it.

“Well, I think we can take our time over the rest of it now,” Sherlock said, unexpectedly. Sherlock in the middle of a case was normally a man possessed. John felt fairly possessed himself. Adrenalin could do that to a man. And thinking of adrenalin...

“Time? There's a man down there systematically pulling the library to bits.”

“Precisely. And he's going to be there for some hours yet.” Sherlock's smile was vulpine. “Don't you want to know the rest of it? You can go downstairs and keep an eye on him if it makes you any happier, but he's not going anywhere till he's found this.” He spun the USB stick in the air, flashily, then dropped it into his pocket. “If we go down the back stairs and round the corner, there's an MP's office on the ground floor that should have a halfway decent Internet connection.”

John looked at him in horror.

“Your career as a burglar is going to your head. First the flat, then the library, and now you want to break into some MPs office just to round off the evening? Most people just do the rounds of the clubs if they want a night on the edge. What's next, Scotland Yard?”

Sherlock's face was absolutely expressionless.

“You haven't. Please tell me you haven't.”

“Lestrade was annoying me. Anyway, it was ages ago. Look, we really can't do what I need to do in here. Library connections are inevitably Jurassic. And if you're worried about the look of the thing, remember my brother is ostentatiously ignoring us. If Mycroft's given me carte blanche, even he can't very well object if I use it.”

John was far from sure about this, but Sherlock was already halfway to the door, and there was nothing to do but follow. He caught Sherlock by the arm just as he was easing open the door to the landing.

“Sherlock?”

“What now?”

“Put the book back. And that first edition of Tom Paine's Commonsense.”

"Honestly, John, this archive was founded on the principle that all property is theft…"

"That's the attitude you always take to libraries. Not this time. We've committed enough crimes for one evening."

"Well, apart from nicking a shadow cabinet minister's private stash of Earl Grey tea-bags. We've got a long wait on our hands, after all."

---

Four thirty in the morning. A dismal hour. Two, perhaps three hours to go till daylight, if it was a grey morning. And still only two and a half rooms searched, of - how many? Better not think of that. Just keep going. Pull out the books, run a hand along the shelf, on to the next. At least he could ignore the rooms full of pamphlets and papers. His arms and back were aching now, throat and eyes itching with the dust, but no time to stop. Clear the shelf. Search. On to the next.

Tim didn't hear the door opening as the next armful of books was dropped to the ground. Only at the sound of footsteps crossing the floor did he swing round, to stand with his back pressed against the shelves. Sherlock was standing just inside the closed door, while John blocked the way to the window. He felt his face twist into a bitter approximation of a smile.

"Ah. The albino monks, I presume."

Sherlock ignored this, stalking forward until his tall figure seemed to block out all the light.

"Treason is a very serious crime, my brother tells me. To say nothing of murder."

Murder. God, no. No.

"... as I'm sure your sister could tell us," that inexorable voice continued. The room swam grey about him.

“Sit down before you fall down.” John's voice, harsh. “It won't help anything if you black out on us.”

He stumbled to a chair, forced himself to take another breath, to concentrate on what was in front of him. His own voice, when it came, was hoarse, hardly more than a whisper.

"What do you know about Sukey?"

“Your sister? Studied in Manchester, moved to America two years ago to take her master's at Syracuse. Took up with the wrong crowd, you thought. You called her regularly, twice a week. Then, two months ago, for three days, you were on the phone for three hours a day. Then nothing. A telling pattern, that. ” Sherlock skimmed a newspaper printout onto the table in front of him. The headline - “Hansforth heir in death crash drama” - was all too familiar. So, too, were the grainy photos accompanying it. “There was a man. Very young, very rich, and very, very drunk. Your sister was, apparently, driving him home. Wet night. Man stumbles out of a bar into the road right in front of them. Drugged to the eyes – drunk, too. Nothing anyone could have done; the bar bouncer supports your sister's story. Your sister in hospital overnight, desperately upset. Her passenger whisked off by his family to recuperate at their ranch in Montana. Police very understanding. She thought that was the end of the matter.

“Three days after the crash, you got a letter. No return address. And a sim card.”

“Not a letter. A photo,” he managed.

“A photo, of course. Not one of the ones in the paper. A photo of the dead man."

"He was –" Tim's tongue felt somehow thick in his mouth. That photo – Sukey, wearing very little indeed, hanging round the young man's neck, obviously caught mid-snog, a frat-house party, just the kind of thing he'd told her to avoid – "She knew him. More than knew. Hadn't told the police."

Sherlock's face seemed almost inhuman in its lack of expression. "You bought a phone, put the sim card in it. There was a message, recorded, a text... it doesn't matter. 'Do as we tell you, or your sister goes down.' You should have gone straight to Mycroft with it."

"Wasn't working for him them." No point in dwelling on that twenty-four hours during which he knew he had to take the whole thing to Carstairs, knew he wasn't going to. The last twenty-four hours during which he'd been, if only in theory, his own man.

"A meaningless quibble. Anyway, you sent your acceptance. And for two months, there was nothing to do. You started to hope there never would be. And then you got another text.”

He stopped, and looked at Tim expectantly. Tim stared back, silent. “The phone,” Sherlock repeated, holding out his hand.

Handing it over should have made a difference, one way or the other, but it didn't. What difference could it make to a murderer, anyway? The rest of it scarcely mattered, now. And Sherlock seemed to know everything already.

“Not quite everything,” said Sherlock – could the man really be a mindreader? There had been that file from the 70s... No. Concentrate. “But enough. Including some significant facts which seem to have escaped your rather limited attention. Did it never occur to you to ask whether your sister was actually driving that car?”

“She told the police...”

“Did you ask her?”

Tim shook his head.

“I thought as much. Not the kind to investigate when you can assume. Well, she wasn't. The pattern of bruising's all wrong, the grazes are wrong, the marks on the side of the car are wrong. Any competent police officer should have been able to tell that – contradiction in terms, of course. Neither was it an accident.”

Tim gaped at him.

“The victim was clearly pushed, probably by the bouncer. Position of the body, swerve marks on the road, not just a drunken stumble. Owed money to a gang, most likely. Unfortunate that the people responsible for the murder decided to take advantage of an additional opportunity when it offered, but hardly your sister's fault.”

Too much to take in. He concentrated on the one statement that had made an impression.

“But then, if she wasn't driving, why did she say she was? I don't understand.”

“Doubtless she had reasons of her own. You were right, to an extent. Sukey had got mixed up with some very unpleasant people. And if you hadn't high-handedly taken it on yourself to act in her own best interests without even asking what those interests were the situation would have passed. As it is, she is now in very considerable danger. Entirely by your doing.”

All for nothing, then? Worse than nothing. But he had to know...

“Danger?”

“Fortunately, I have been able to reduce that risk. With her permission, I might add. Which leaves me with just one problem. You. I have a – personal objection – to bringing the Government into this. And on this occasion, that includes the police.”

“But you have to do something about me.”

“Well, you're scarcely a threat now. Washed up. Cover blown – not that it was much of a cover in the first place – leverage gone, name gone, trust gone. Overall value to the Government, nil. I imagine there are rather a lot of people who'd like to have a word with you, but that's hardly my concern. So; you tell me. What should I do with you?”

A last, bitter spasm of mirth. Astonishing the power of cheap fiction.

“Traditionally, of course, the murderer is left to contemplate his sins with a bottle of whisky and a revolver.”

Sherlock's eyebrows rose. “Well, we have a library.” An expansive gesture swept the room. “What's left of it. And I believe I can oblige with the malt.” He produced a small flask from one pocket, and placed it squarely on the table in front of Tim. “Ah, John?”

His gaze held John's for several seconds. Reluctantly, John pulled out what looked like a Service-issue automatic from his waistband. He crossed the room and placed it beside the flask. John's hand lingered on the gun for a moment, his eyes still fixed on Sherlock; the unspoken communication between them clear as if they had shouted.

I hope you know what you're doing.

When don't I?

That steady look transferred now from Sherlock's face to Tim's own. There might even have been sympathy in it, though there was no pity. A grim nod, one professional to another. And a step back, into the shadows. A good man to have for a cousin, if only for an evening.

“Of course,” said Sherlock's voice, very precise, very soft, “This touching scenario lacks one vital element.”

"What?"

“There is no murderer.”

He turned on the spot, his coat swirling around them. John was barely half a pace behind.

The lock clicked shut behind them. Tim sat for what felt like a very long time, staring at the table.

......

Sherlock's fingers clamped painfully round John's upper arm. “Not yet. Wait.”

No sound from the other room. Then, suddenly, a shot.

The grip dropped instantly, but John was wrestling with the lock and through the door before Sherlock had moved. Inside, the room was empty. The flask had gone from the table. The gun was lying on the floor inside the window, which was wide open, its security lock shot off. In the early morning silence, footsteps could be heard running down the street and fading into the distance. John bent to pick the gun up, then slumped against the wall and started to laugh.

“My God. And I thought your brother was the melodramatic one.”

“They're all like that. I think it's something in the water at Whitehall.”

John didn't bother to dignify that with a response. After another moment, he hauled himself heavily to his feet, then stood leaning against the table while he checked the gun over. A sidelong glance.

“High-handedly taking it on yourself to act in her own best interests?” he murmured.

Sherlock gave him something that might have been the ghost of a grin.